THE TABLET October 17th, 1959. VOL. 213, No. 6230

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

OCTOBER 17th, 1959

NINEPENCE

Not Needed: The Third Rejection of Socialism

De Gaulle and llis Critics: a Weak Opposition in France. By F rank Macmillan State and Child in the Sudan: The Christian Schools: II. By Patrick O ’Connor

Between Four Walls: Jean-Paul Sartre’s New Play. By Louis Allen Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

DRAWING CLOSER TO EUROPE

LLfHEN the Conservatives first came back into power,

at the end of 1951. they made it very plain that the exchange control should go. It was something quite novel under which the country had had to live not only through the war, as was only to be expected, but for six years after the war. It was among the controls from which they meant to set the people free. But the years passed, and the adverse balance of payments did not prove easy to correct, and it was only towards the end of the ’fifties that partial progress could be announced, the state of half-convertibility which exists today, by which foreigners have virtually no difficulty in making a free use of sterling but British subjects are still vexatiously controlled. It is an illogical position, when so much foreign money is coming into London to be invested here. It has been made easier for a reciprocal process to take place, and a new Unit Trust has been launched to invest internationally. But the private person still has trouble in making capital purchases abroad.

The Belgian Minister of Finance has worked out a plan to halve the ten years to which the achievement of a Common Market in Western Europe was originally allotted. He argues that it could all be done in five ; that the advantage of the market is so clear, the employment position so healthy, the ability to give assistance to any locality which may be exceptionally hit so sufficient, that it is surely needless to dawdle. If he is listened to, the tariff handicap will become more serious in the lifetime of the new British Government. There should not be the further handicap, to prevent British citizens from participating as individuals in the rich possibilities that lie so close at hand.

If the Government still feels inhibited from going further than is involved in the attempt to organise an Outer Seven, really as a way of strengthening Britain’s bargaining position, that is no reason why they should not facilitate an increasing participation of British industry, just as American industry is beginning to participate by establishing itself inside the Common Market. Certainly it is a good sign that Mr. Macmillan’s second administration is conscious that now is the time to draw closer to France and Germany, for here time is not on our side. The more success General de Gaulle and Dr. Adenauer have in drawing their two countries together, the more difficult it will be for Britain.

Fundamentally, the Franco-German rapprochement in the Common Market and NATO represents the reassertion of Europe in the face of both America and Russia. Apart, the separate Western European countries are secondary Powers by modern standards ; united they are the equal of anybody. The Americans are not jealous of this unity. They are, on the contrary, very anxious to see it, for the stronger Europe is the less is the risk of war, and the bigger the share that can be shouldered by the European nations in the acceleration of Asian and African development. The British Dominions take the same view as the United States, and Canadian and Australian statesmen have both expressed it on a number of occasions. Twice in this century their young men have crossed the oceans to fight in Western Europe, for the safety of Britain, which they recognise is to their own interest. They would much rather not have had to come, and the stronger and the more united Western Europe becomes, with the West Germans closely integrated with their neighbours, the better pleased the Dominions will be.

Does there still remain in this country, and in the Conservative Party or the Foreign Office, any vestige of the old instinctive policy that this country followed for so long, which is taught in the history books as the policy of the balance of power, by which Britain always opposed unification in Europe, expressed as opposing the strongest Power on the Continent, fighting in turn against Spain, France and Germany?

There are people who see the Common Market policy in terms of Napoleon’s Continental blockade, the unifying of the Continent to the exclusion of British goods, and who think the decks must be cleared to fight a tariff war. In this figures the organisation of the Outer Seven, the Scandinavian countries and Austria and Switzerland, which have their own reasons for